The present invention relates to a catheter to be used in cardiovascular field, more specifically to an aspiration catheter for distal protection in a percutaneous coronary, SVG or saphenous vein graft or peripherical intervention.
Blood vessels are sometimes occluded by plaques or thrombus, this situation is very dangerous to patients health, so often it is necessary to perform medical interventions to remove them.
The percutaneous revascularization interventions, such as angioplasty or stent placement, are to be limited, because they can generate emboli during the procedure. The presence of emboli in the human body is a well-known death or serious injury cause.
So, it has been necessary to develop systems to remove the emboli.
Till now, on the market there is a number of so called protection system, that are substantially composed of occlusion devices or filters that stop and catch the emboli and some dedicated aspiration systems.
These systems are not always useful, due to some difficulties of the procedures that cannot be eluded.
First of all the distal protection intervention must be quick, so the system has to be easy to manipulate and to work; it has to be quickly positioned even if the vessels way is impervious; it positioned even if the vessels way is impervious; it has to perform safely when positioning and also when removing it, it has to work also in very small vessels (less than 4 mm diameter); it has to have the capability of catching large emboli showing the smallest possible encumbrance in the vessel.
The marketed systems are now distant from the above described objectives.